From job crafting to faculty vitality: the role of academic identity centrality and digital well-being in higher education

In today’s increasingly digital higher education setting, faculty vitality is key to ensuring academic performance and well-being. The relationship between proactive work behaviours and faculty vitality, however, has been less explored with regard to the psychological mechanisms. This study builds on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) Theory and Identity Theory to investigate the relationships between Job Crafting (JC), Academic Identity Centrality (AIC), Digital Well-Being (DWB), and Faculty Vitality (FV). The cross-sectional survey was conducted among 426 faculty members from higher education institutions in the state of Karnataka, India, with purposive sampling. PLS-SEM was used to analyse the data. The results suggest that job crafting is positively related to academic identity centrality and faculty vitality. Academic identity centrality is positively correlated with digital well-being, and digital well-being is positively correlated with faculty vitality. Overall, the findings support the independent and sequential involvement of academic identity centrality and digital well-being in the relationship between job crafting and faculty vitality. These findings take the JD-R and Identity Theory approaches further by combining behavioural, identity and digital elements in a single framework to understand faculty vitality. The study contributes to the higher education literature by highlighting the importance of reinforcing academic identity and fostering healthy digital practices alongside proactive job crafting. Cultivating job-crafting opportunities, strengthening academic identity, and promoting digital well-being are three potential avenues for practitioners at higher education institutions to enhance faculty vitality. Longitudinal and cross-cultural research designs could be used to construct the proposed framework in future research.